The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos

by Margaret Mascarenhas

  “But what happened? Something must have happened.”

  “Ay, que vaina, Lily. He kissed her. And she’s such a zanahoria that she thought she could get pregnant from it.”

  “Why did he kiss her?”

  “Now you are sounding as stupid and immature as Luz. Why wouldn’t he? He’s a guy, isn’t he? You should never have brought her, the little whining baby,” said Irene, “but since you did, you’ve got to keep her quiet. You’ve just got to, Lily.”

  “Okay,” said Lily, “calm down.”

  When she came back into the room, Luz pretended she hadn’t heard anything. She couldn’t exactly defend herself, since what Irene said was true: she had invited Miguel Rojas to the hotel room. Or had he invited himself? She couldn’t remember. She couldn’t remember because she had been drunk. No one had poured glasses and glasses of piña colada down her throat against her will, true. But Irene and Lily could have stopped her. Her mother would probably not see it that way, though. It was her own fault, acting like a little campecina slut, that’s probably what her mother would say. So what was the point of telling? Even if Luz hated her guts right now, Irene was right.

  Pulling her T-shirt over her head and zipping up her jeans, she emerged from the bathroom and said, “Where to next, chamas?” As though everything were normal.

  “I know,” said Irene, giving Lily a warning look, “let’s go to the shopping arcade and find something really chévere to buy.”

  In the Macuto shopping arcade, they went into the jewelry store first. And there, on the display table, Luz saw a silver charm bracelet and wanted it. It had the tiny figures of Las Tres Potencias dangling from it—Maria Lionza, El Negro Felipe, and El Indio Guaicaipuro. Luz thought her mother would love it; and it wouldn’t hurt to have something to offer, something to temper the storm, in case it turned out she had made her mother into a grandmother. Looking at the label, she saw it was marked half off at six hundred bolívares. Just then, Irene picked it up and said, “I’m buying this bracelet.”

  “No,” Luz said, “I saw it first.” Suddenly, possession of the bracelet became the most important thing in the world.

  Irene seemed about to protest, then changed her mind. “Okay,” she said.

  “Have you got any money? I don’t have enough for this bracelet,” Luz called out to Lily, who was looking at hair clips on the other end of the store.

  “I’ve got three hundred,” said Lily, looking at Luz. “Take it.”

  Her lips pressed into a thin line of concentration, Luz dug into the pocket of her jeans, retrieved the now crumpled bolívar notes Señor Ismael had given her, and completed her purchase while Lily called her father from the phone at the front counter and told him that she and Luz were ready to come home. Irene said she’d take a taxi back home. “Call me tomorrow, we’ll make another date to meet with Moriche and Elvis before you go back to Valencia.” Luz was clearly excluded from any future plans.

  Before they went to sleep that night, Lily put her arm around Luz and said, “You’re okay, right? You can’t tell anyone what we did today, Lucecita, please, I beg of you. Because if you do, I’ll be sent to the convent for the rest of my life, and Irene’s father will put a bullet right though his own daughter’s heart; you have no idea how tyrannical he is about her.”

  “Stop acting like an opera star. I won’t tell anyone,” said Luz. However, that was before she discovered that the bracelet was missing from her towel bag.

  “She took my bracelet,” she said to Lily.

  “Irene? Don’t be silly. She would never steal your bracelet. You probably left it at the store.”

  But Luz was certain that Irene was the culprit, and as far as she was concerned, the idea of Irene with a bullet through her heart was not a displeasing one.

  At first no one was too worried when Luz went off her food on the fourth day of Semana Santa, two days after the outing to the Macuto. Perhaps it was a bug, they thought. But three days after that, on Easter Sunday, when Luz refused to get out of bed and dress herself, Marta threw up her hands in despair and Luz could hear her complaining to Consuelo in the kitchen. “I’ll talk to her when we come back from Mass,” said Consuelo. When they returned from the church, Consuelo came to the room Luz shared with her mother, carrying a bowl of steaming mondongo on a tray.

  “Tell me what is wrong, Luz,” she said, holding up a spoon of thick soup to the girl’s lips. “I’m sure we can find a solution together.”

  But Luz had turned her face to the wall.

  Lily came in next. “Mami says I’m not to leave this room without you. ¿Qué te pasa, Lucecita? Please tell me.”

  To this day, Luz doesn’t know what made her say, “The bracelet,” or why the loss of the bracelet symbolized everything that was wrong with her life.

  Through half closed eyes, Luz observed that Lily seemed relieved and confused at the same time. “I’ll ask Irene about the bracelet, if that will make you happy.”

  And just like that, Luz felt better. Without looking at Lily, she got out of bed, had a bath, combed her hair, pulled on a clean pair of jeans and a white shirt. She walked into the kitchen, sat down at the table and ate an enormous bowl of mondongo.

  Luz was certain that Lily hadn’t known what went on at the Macuto between her and Miguel Rojas, or later in the hotel room between herself and Irene. She knew it was irrational to blame Lily for something she didn’t know at the time. But there it was, she couldn’t let Lily off the hook.

  It was a day before they returned to Valencia. Luz was on her way to the panadería and saw Irene and Lily talking just inside. She stood by the wrought-iron gate at the entrance and listened.

  “I’m in a lot of trouble with Mercedes, chama,” said Irene. “Apparently she suspected about Moriche and me. She went to the Macuto and talked to the management and the waiters and everything. She showed them a photograph of me. One of the waiters told her he remembered me, and told her that I was with two other girls and three guys. He told her we had a room and that one of the girls and one of the guys had gone into it together. He even told her that one of the other guys we were with was an indio. Coño, chama, he blabbed everything to my mother. So of course, she just knew the indio with me was Moriche. Pues, Mercedes threw a fit, armó un saperoco, and the result is that Moriche and I are running away together, as soon as we can figure out a way.”

  Luz is surprised when, instead of gasping with illicit excitement about Irene’s plan, Lily says, “Luz was different after that day. I think it had something to do with Miguel Rojas. She got sick, she wouldn’t eat, and that probably made Mami suspicious. But I didn’t tell her anything and neither did Luz. I’m certain.”

  “Maybe, but she made sure to draw attention to herself. I knew we couldn’t trust her.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Listen, she’s not so innocent. She’s the one who took him to the hotel room, and drank like fifty piña coladas, which he paid for, by the way. What did she expect? So maybe he showed her his thing. Big deal. She got what she asked for. And it’s not like she got pregnant or anything.”

  “Maybe he did what? You said he only kissed her—you acted like it was impossible that he could have done anything more.” Lily’s voice was rising in pitch and volume.

  “SHHHHHHHSH! Listen,” said Irene, “I said that because that is what you wanted me to do. You felt guilty for bringing her, for using her as part of the cover for meeting Elvis, and don’t tell me it isn’t true.”

  “It isn’t true!” Lily whispered.

  “Yes it is,” Irene said, and walked out the gate, sticking her tongue out at Luz on the way out.

  “Crybaby,” she said.

  “Thief,” Luz replied.

  Luz went into the panadería. As she walked past Lily, she stared at her triumphantly, but Lily did not meet her eyes. Lily had never been able to meet her eyes after that, always looking somewhere near the top of Luz’s head whenever she spoke to her. Coward, Luz thought, but did not say.
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  When the girls returned to Valencia the following day, the equation between Lily and Luz had changed. Luz felt new, shiny and powerful, as if the act of eating and shitting out a large quantity of mondongo had cleansed her of what happened at the Macuto, while Lily was meeker and milder, a diluted version of herself. Lily was more careful now, palliating, as though Luz might be a ticking bomb.

  Luz knew Lily felt guilty for using her as a beard to go out with Irene, and for exposing her to a situation for which Luz had been ill-prepared, and that’s how Luz wanted her to feel. Irene hadn’t been specific, and if Lily thought Miguel had put his thing in her, so much the better.

  But power was not love. Lily still did not love her more than she loved Irene. And when she got to choose a friend to go to Maquiritare, it was not Luz she chose.

  Though Lily had temporarily lost her mind after the bad business with Irene in Maquiritare, she had recovered and rejoined the convent school a month later, where she would graduate with Luz three years later. And during this time Luz developed a fondness for measuring her own happiness in terms of before and after Irene.

  A few days after graduation, and after returning to Tamanaco, Luz unpacked and unwrapped the clay image of a dancer she had made in school. Carrying it carefully, she went out to the patio, where Consuelo stood at her easel painting the light through the trees in watercolor on paper.

  “I made this for you,” she said, offering the dancer to Consuelo in cupped hands.

  “Thank you, Luz,” said Consuelo, laying down her brush, “it’s lovely. Come, let’s put it on the side table in my bedroom.” When they went into the bedroom Luz placed the clay dancer on the table. And that was when she saw the bracelet. Just casually lying there on the floor, almost under the bed. What was it doing there?

  She picked it up and held it up to the light. “I remember this bracelet,” she said. Consuelo took it from her and put it in the drawer of the bedside table.

  Consuelo sighed. “We found it in Maquiritare years ago. It must have belonged to that poor girl. The Guardia Nacional said they had no use for it. I meant to return it to her mother, but it slipped my mind.” If at all it was necessary to refer to what happened in Maquiritare, to the disappearance of Irene Dos Santos, everyone referred to her as “that poor girl” and to the incident as “the accident,” though there was an unspoken agreement not to make any reference to it at all, however veiled, in Lily’s presence. “It must have fallen when I was cleaning out the drawer. Don’t tell Lily. I’d rather she not be reminded of what happened.”

  “The bracelet is mine,” said Luz. “I bought it for my mother.”

  Consuelo tried to reason with her. “Luz, if Marta wears it, Lily will see it.”

  “Irene stole it and I want it back,” Luz insisted.

  Consuelo sighed again. “All right. Perhaps she won’t remember it. But if I give it to you, you must promise that you won’t tell Lily where you got it.”

  “If she notices it, I’ll say I bought it recently.” But as much as Luz loved Consuelo, envy and hatred got the better of her, and she could not resist dealing Irene one last blow. That’s how Luz explains to herself now what she did then: as getting even with Irene.

  Lily lay on the bed reading a magazine, when Luz entered and said, “I want to show you something.” She pulled up the sleeve of her blouse to display the bracelet.

  “That’s nice,” said Lily.

  Luz thought Lily was protecting Irene, that she had to be pretending not to remember what happened before the accident. Her promise to Consuelo flew out of her head. “Apparently your mother found it in your hand after the accident.”

  “What accident?”

  “When Irene drowned.” Luz could almost hear the whoosh of an ax cutting through the air, and a wicked thrill of delight danced in her belly.

  Lily’s eyes began to lose focus, her lips to drain of their color, her fingers to pick like birds at invisible bits of lint on the bedcover.

  And Luz was suddenly afraid. She had gone too far.

  “Epa, I’m just kidding around,” she backpedaled furiously. “I bought it for my mother. She loves anything with Maria Lionza on it.”

  “Which shop?” The color was beginning to return to Lily’s lips.

  “Oh, it was just a souvenir seller who had set up near the panadería,” said Luz, eager to step away from the precipice, to reverse her betrayal of Consuelo, to erase the past few minutes.

  “I’m sure she’ll love it, Luz,” said Lily.

  The bracelet flashed shiny and bright against the palm of Luz’s hand. When she presented it to her mother, she had been so pleased, just as Luz imagined she would be. But the satisfaction of finally seeing the bracelet on her mother’s wrist had come at a cost. After she insisted on claiming the bracelet and demonstrated her disregard for the potential consequences of such an act, Consuelo, whose love she coveted almost as much as her mother’s, had never looked at her in quite the same way again; a crack had formed in the cup of her love for Luz.

  As it turned out, and in spite of the bad beginning, Miguel Rojas was quite taken by Luz and went to ask Irene for her address. Irene was persuaded to part with the information only after being bribed with a box of imported Swiss chocolates and first-rate seats for the Gloria Gaynor concert at the Poliedro. But being one of those for whom out of sight is out of mind, he stuffed the address in his wallet and forgot about it, until, a month after she graduated from high-school in Valencia and returned to Tamanaco, he looked at the security camera feed from his executive office at the largest of his supermarkets and saw her pushing a grocery cart down the cereal aisle. He dug frantically into the pockets of his wallet until he retrieved the address, written on a page of notepaper that was frayed and yellowed with age but still legible. Then he went to the flower section of the Supermercado Costa and filled his car to the brim with roses of all the colors available. Even Marta had been impressed.

  “Now that is how a boy should treat the girl he loves,” she said.

  Miguel Rojas courted Luz every day for a whole year. They never spoke of that day at the Hotel Macuto, and throughout their courtship Miguel Rojas was the perfect gentleman, never forcing even a kiss. The first time they kissed, it had been Luz who held him by the collar, pulled him toward her, and offered him her lips.

  When she was admitted to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy, he was seated by her bedside when she awoke and her hospital room was filled with roses. And a few months after that, exactly two years after her graduation from high school, he asked her to marry him.

  The year they married it was discovered that the surgeon who had performed the appendectomy had accidentally cut something he shouldn’t have. Because of this, the peritoneal lining had looped around her right fallopian tube, causing cysting and infection. The infection had spread throughout her abdominal cavity. Miguel flew Luz to a specialist in Miami who conducted another exploratory laparoscopy and told her she would require more surgery, but he would not be able to give her any guarantees. The Miami surgeon took the right ovary and tube, removed cysts from her womb and from the left ovary, cutting part of it away. He noted that the left tube was damaged by scarring from the infection and decided to take everything out. Again, when she awoke Miguel was by her side and the smell of roses suffused the air in the room. After he told her the news that she would never be able to conceive, he held her tight against him while her tears soaked the front of his shirt. He told her it didn’t matter.

  Although she came to accept that no child would ever emerge from her womb, she could no longer bear the smell of roses. And when Miguel made love to her, she often wept. After some time, he stopped making love to her and moved into the guest room and she did not ask why.

  A few days before their ninth anniversary, Miguel said he wanted a divorce.

  “Because you want children?” she asked.

  “No, Luz,” he said. “You know it isn’t that.”

  “What then?”

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bsp; “Luz, we don’t even sleep together anymore.”

  “Pero te quiero.”

  “You love me like you would a father or a brother, not a lover.”

  When Luz tries to recall the exact reason she said yes when Miguel asked her to marry him, she cannot remember it. Could it be that she had been merely flattered to be the beneficiary of the kind of attentions customarily bestowed on the beauteous Lily? Or perhaps it was the awed expression on her own mother’s face when confronted with the fact that Luz was being wooed by the Supermarket King of the country. Though she had grown to love him, he was right—it was akin to the love of a friend, a father, a brother, a love without ardor. When she realized this, she felt like an impostor and was almost relieved that the charade was over.

  Even their divorce had been devoid of passion. Miguel gave her an enormous settlement that included the penthouse, stock in TVista, sole custody of their beloved Japanese Spitz, Muchacha, and more cash than she could possibly spend in her lifetime. She was free, she could do anything she wanted, she could rely upon him if she needed anything, he said. But after the divorce was final, she found herself missing married life with a keen, sharp longing that sometimes made it difficult to breathe. She missed the feeling of walking into a dinner party with her arm linked to one of the most powerful men in the room, and the way other women’s heads would turn as they entered. She missed the warmth of his body next to hers when she woke up in the morning. She missed being adored.

  But did she miss Miguel himself? Was it love or loneliness that made her want him back?

  She had tried dating, but was clumsy and awkward at it because the only person she had ever dated was Miguel Rojas, and even then he had done all the work. Besides, she thought of herself as damaged goods; a woman who could not bear children, who would want a woman like that? And then there was her wealth to factor into any romantic equation. At the back of her mind was always the question of whether the man across the table from her at the restaurant was after her money. It was all too difficult and not worth it, this search for a partner, the investment of her time, when she would probably find out in the end that the guy was already married, or boring, or stingy, or weird. She hadn’t the energy to start all over again.